Dr. Alicia Jackson, Deputy Director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office (BTO), discusses the potential of synthetic biology and describes new tools that are speeding progress in the field at the "Biology is Technology" symposium in New York City on June 23, 2015. The two-day event was held by BTO to bring together leading-edge technologists, start-ups, industry, and academic researchers to look at how advances in engineering and information sciences can be used to drive biology for technological advantage.